It's never sonically engaging enough to stand out amid a rack of backpacks. [Dec 2007, p.112]

While occasionally meandering or drifting into tempests of digital noise, Herren focuses on a path of rapturous melancholy.

Disc two works better in theory than fact, compiling disparate song fragments into a single 33-minute mixtape-inspired track, but the group's radiant delight in pure sound is undimmed.

Aside from "Lovealot," she proudly proclaims her intentions as a first-world pop star, de-emphasizing found collage and "third-world democracy" for melodic sway and punky bluster.

She represents a highly commercial compromise between Amy Winehouse's genuine soul danger and James Blunt's sclocky pop safety. [July 2008, p.92]

Though it lacks the electrifying newness of the Sung Tongs era, Eucalyptus is nonetheless a success. It is a patient, reflective, and decidedly low-key work, one that seems content to thrum along in its own corner of the universe without much regard for whether anyone’s there to receive its generous gifts.

A quick dip into glitch seems like a novice move, but all that slide guitar and glockenspiel give Sea of Bees a seasoned sorrow.

The [album] is exuberant and enthusiastic, and its architect bops along with an unapologetically clean-cut strut.

Between the groovier tracks, the album rarely keeps its feet or focus for long, getting lost in mazes of mangy Stones riffs or acoustic roundabouts with little purpose or pulse.

On Head First, the singer's bandmate-producer Will Gregory creates a pitch-perfect neon-lit '80s wonderland with Hi-NRG bass lines and plenty of that fat synth sound made famous by Van Halen's "Jump."

The result: an album exuding wall-punching energy, ugly noise, and raging nostalgia for stale bong water and sunburn.

None of this will make Devin a star anytime soon, but that's less his fault than it is everyone else's. [Nov 2008, p.90]

Face Control's programmed electronics, in fact, ring deeply human, and Boeckner's tortured vocals express shared experience rather than alienation.

Cryptacize's latest squanders the band's natural resource: singer Nedelle Torrisi.

Hip-hop-style braggadocio doesn't quite jibe with the band's relentlessly earnest outlook, which comes packaged here in songs no less hooky or propulsive than usual. It might have provided a jolt of excitement, though; even the amped-up standouts (like "Coffee and Cigarettes") are beginning to feel a bit by the numbers.

While the production's scope doesn't quite fit Chikita Violenta's knack for scrappy Superchunk-style guitar pop, the busy shimmer usually complements the songs' energy instead of burying it.

Watson gives Nero's robotic skronk a rare injection of humanity, and the U.K. producers are smart enough to build most of their debut full-length around her husky voice.

Ideal for anyone who finds Cypress Hill too sober.

So no, this is not a cohesive crew album, but has there really been one since Marley Marl's In Control, Vol. 1 came out 24 years ago?

The Dead of the World holds firm to the orthodox occult black metal machinations we’ve come to expect.

As defiant as this gang of four wants to be, they can't help but humbly return to their strengths.

[Sinatra's] is a light, ductile weirdness, and nearly all the contributing acolytes here play to it well. [Jan 2005, p.96]

He may have kept his lyrical gift hidden, but he didn't lose it.

He takes Lambs Anger's used parts and models them compressing keyboard sounds and looped samples into a sci-fi party mix. [Feb 2009, p.82]

It's like an alt-rock adaptation of a John Cheever anthology. [Apr 2007, p.87]

After honing their Cure impression on 2007's breakout "Our Ill Wills," these heart-on-sleeve Swedes team up with indie crossover producer Phil Ek (the Shins, Modest Mouse, Fleet Foxes) for a third album of ably crafted sincerity.

The third album (and first for a major) from this Boston-born, Mississippi- and Chicago-bred singer-guitarist is bound to inspire Sam Cooke comparisons, but Get It just as frequently stirs up Jackson 5 dance fever.